Thursday, June 27, 2013

I’ve been consulting and coaching management teams and designing their important presentations for 20+ years. Early in the process of building my business, I identified a need for specific services and pioneered a turnkey one-stop shopping for companies engaged in private equity fundraising, M&A or the IPO process.

As a result I know a little bit about working with tight deadlines, speaker preparation, and motivating and training busy executives to focus, deliver and engage a skeptical investor who may be half-listening in the midst of a chattering hostile market.

After hundreds of assignments across diverse industries such as semiconductor, software, venture capital, legal, security, gaming, agriculture, retail, cleantech and medical device, I continue to work with my clients to improve their individual delivery skills to move, inform and motivate an audience.

Sometimes all that’s required is a review and clean up of an existing slide presentation or providing coaching and video feedback for an individual speaker to brush up and dust off rusty delivery skills. But more often the assignment is a start-from-scratch, complete package that includes slide concept and design as well as personal delivery skills coaching and Q&A training for the management team.

Whatever the speaking engagement, I’m always focused on clarity and consistency in design and pitch. And if the presentation includes visuals, I take care to ensure that the visuals enhance the spoken word and never compete with it.

Visuals are powerful and will steal the spotlight if a speaker hasn’t been taught the power of an image and the importance of crafting a message to work with it. Presentation graphics should support the speaker’s unique story, engage the audience, and not override, dilute or blur the message.